Other Letters

Transit Mall, Living Wage, Graffiti and Term Limits

March 29, 2001

Dear Editor,

Do you know what will happen when the city cannot prove to the Coastal Commission that in five years the Downtown Transit Mall has not had negative impacts on traffic and parking? The project will have to be undone.

Unfortunately, in many cases the undoing of projects costs double what it costs to put in, and instead of federal money (which will be used to develop the transit mall), the undoing costs will come at the expense of the Santa Monica taxpayer. What a waste!

Joe Weichman
Santa Monica

March 29, 2001

Dear Editor,

SMRR's Living Wage Campaign

One more time, our council has been warned that a lawsuit is inevitable. This warning specifically states that substantial General Fund resources (our tax dollars) will be spent to defend yet another unconstitutional City ordinance. The taxpayers in this community are
being used to finance and promote another SMRR political campaign, more national headlines.

This campaign has already cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and will continue to be subsidized by the City coffers: Hours of testimony given by non-residents and non-city workers, costing thousands of dollars in staff time and City TV air time. The huge demonstrations in our streets that have already cost tax payers over a million dollars
for police. Most of the demonstrators were organized by unions and bused in from other areas. This issue is not what I consider to be 'pressing' City business. Then there's the $80,000 or more that has been spent on 'studying' the issue and plenty more will follow.

Then there is the cost of the lawsuits we're going to be slapped with. .Taxes are only one of the valuable resources being eaten up with this campaign; City staff's time and energy has been diverted from dealing with the real problems in our Santa Monica. Our resources should be
directed at solving the real needs of this community.

One of those real problems is the rising cost of energy. It has doubled since last year, it will more than double by the end of the year. Yet, we continue to be charged a 10% utility users tax on these soaring prices.

Money collected from the utility users tax is being used to subsidize this Living Wage campaign. It's ironic that the SMRR City officials cite parks, libraries and schools, as the areas that would go unfunded if there should be a decrease of the 10% rate of the utility users tax. They never suggested a cut-back in the City's lawsuit budget or decreasing the amount that is spent on the special interest campaigns of our politicians. How about a little 'justice' for taxpayers in this
community?

Donna Block
Santa Monica

March 28, 2001

Dear Editor:

Tom Larmore needs a comedy makeover. It's a good thing his livelihood does not appear to depend on his humor. Because if it did, he too would be among the working poor needing to rely on public assistance for food, clothing and shelter.

Beth Leder-Pack

March 25, 2001

(These comments were submitted by a Pico business owner contacted for the Special Report: "Writing on the Wall" by Teresa Rochester.)

Graffiti is all about stupidity and cowardice. Every time one of these cowards in the night with a spray can or a marker vandalizes a building, his graffiti screams "My mother was too stupid to teach me to live like a human being and my farther was too stupid to teach me to be a man."

Sneaking around like a snake in the grass at midnight does not make these worthless pukes into macho men, it just proves that cowards who fear being observed are snotty little boys with no courage, no intelligence and no value to the human race. Their parents should hide their faces in shame that they had brought such trash into the world.

Sincerely,

Bunnie Meyer

March 15, 2001

Dear Editor,

Re: "Initiative Filed to Elect Mayor at Large"

A good and thoughtful article. However, have term limit proponents given thought to the repercussions of their "successes?"

The best argument against term limits is that running government is a skill that takes time to learn. Would you limit a surgeon to only six years? Man, I don't want to get near a surgeon in his first six years!

Term limits give ungodly (and unaccountable) power to staffers and lobbyists. I agree that entrenched machine politicians, such as we have here in Santa Monica (SMRR is a machine in every way), are a problem. But at least they are expellable by the voters. What mechanism exists
to oust staff or lobbyists?

Seems to me that no small part of our current energy crisis in California is due to reckless behavior by elected officials who knew they wouldn't be in office if their gamble turned out to be wrong. As it clearly was.

Get rid of term limits and replace them with campaign finance reform.

Michael Sieverts
Santa Monica